French Poets in English

STOP

Early Journal Content on JSTOR, Free to Anyone in the World

This article is one of nearly 500,000 scholarly works digitized and made freely available to everyone in
the world by JSTOR.

Known as the Early Journal Content, this set of works include research articles, news, letters, and other
writings published in more than 200 of the oldest leading academic journals. The works date from the
mid-seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries.

We encourage people to read and share the Early Journal Content openly and to tell others that this
resource exists. People may post this content online or redistribute in any way for non-commercial
purposes.

Read more about Early Journal Content at http://about.jstor.org/participate-jstor/individuals/early-
journal-content .

JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary source objects. JSTOR helps people
discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content through a powerful research and teaching
platform, and preserves this content for future generations. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit
organization that also includes Ithaka S+R and Portico. For more information about JSTOR, please
contact support@jstor.org.

French Poets in English

FRENCH POETS IN ENGLISH

Fleurs de Lys, translated and edited by Wilfred Thorley.

Houghton Mifflin Co.

The introduction to this anthology is so lucid and com-
plete that the reader expects equally competent translations.
It sets forth briefly, but well, a history of the poets of
France from the thirteenth century to the present day, show-
ing how their personalities were affected by their times,
analyzing their methods of work and estimating their values
in as fair a manner as is possible to foreign thought. And,
throughout, we find those who would translate urged to
keep to the spirit, rather than the word of the original. With
all this in mind, it is a shock to turn to the opening poem,
which reads like a Scotch ballad! Here is one stanza:

The mirk did fa' lang syne, lang syne,
When twa iond systres wi' hands that twine
Went doun to bathe whaur the waters shine.

Blaiv wind, bend beugh in the stormy weather,

They that be leel sleep saft taegither.

Clearly, the author of this anthology has, as he says, at-
tempted to match the French language as closely as pos-
sible with that of the same period in English literature.
He has followed this plan with all his translations of old
French, and it seems to me a grave mistake, even an affecta-
tion. For the flavor which should infuse its spirit into the
English is altogether missed.

Mr. Thorley has done better with the more modern poems.
He says is his introduction :

[III]

POETRY: A Magazine of Verse

The real task of a translator is that of re-creating, and unless
he can bring to his original as much as he takes from it, he had
far better leave it alone.

But he has sometimes fallen short of his theories, as in his

renderings of Gautier. L'Art, the oft-attempted, has been

translated better by Dobson, or Santayana. Again he says:

It is so difficult to keep rightly informed and critically aloof amid
the trumpeting and disparagement of rival clans, whose activities
seem only to bewilder the native doctors, that a mere foreigner
may be forgiven for including frankly what happens to appeal
to him.

And he has given evidence of his critical aloofness in The
Cloud, considered one of the most delicate of the Emaux et
Camees. Of this he has done into English only three of the
original nine stanzas; omitting the whole point of the poem,
which seems hardly fair to the author.

The renderings of Baudelaire are especially fine. They
have the spirit of the French, and yet — truly a rare achieve-
ment — they do not read like translations. Mallarme's
Apparition keeps the subtle savor of the original. The
author has been less happy with the ten versions of Verlaine.
Maeterlinck is represented by only one poem, The Seven
Maids of Orlamonde, a questionable choice but well trans-
lated. Autumn and Cleopatra, by Samain, are beautifully
presented. Rodenbach's In Tiny Townships is as musical
in English as in French. Of the translations of de Regnier,
The Secret and Experience are excellent, while good render-
ings of Viele-Griffin, Fort, Bataille, Gregh, Guerin and
many other poets give distinction to this anthology.

Agnes Lee Freer

[112]